


Black

by kumulonimbus



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Annecy, Black Lily Widowmaker, Chateau Guillard, Drama, F/M, Scion Hanzo, Young Hanzo, venomous arrow, widowhanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 23:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14272323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumulonimbus/pseuds/kumulonimbus
Summary: (AU) Hanzo, the young heir of the Shimada Clan and his father Sojiro shake hands with the leader of a prominent French family: the Guillards. While the kumicho seeks an alliance between families, the Scion is captivated by the little girl in the corner, dancing away her childhood.





	Black

**Author's Note:**

> This short AU was a Tumblr request -  
> If you want to follow me, username is kumulonimbus.

The first time he saw her, he was seventeen. His gestures were carefully hidden behind his hair, his entire form was concealed behind Sojiro’s impenetrable shadow. She was a child – barely twelve, dancing on her tiptoes while her father was too busy, shaking hands with the devil. The empire was progressing – Asia had become a domestic endeavor for the Shimada Clan so its leader, Sojiro Shimada, had begun seeking allies all across Europe.

France presented itself in the shape of a sophisticated Chateau by the tranquil waters. The young heir, accompanying his father, was supposed to catch a glimpse of the future – how the clan actually worked outside Hanamura, how politics and bureaucracy were supposed to play a very important role in the continuation of their family business. The affairs implied more than money and blood – so the father placed the young heir under his protective wings and the boy sat by his side, contemplating the scene in silence.

As Maurice Guillard welcomed Sojiro and the two leaders acknowledged the mutual alliance between families, the image of that girl dressed in white caught the heir’s attention. The way she danced, as if nothing else truly mattered, was captivating.

“Her name is Amélie,” Maurice – her father – said to the heir and the boy blushed beyond the limits of his obstinate adolescence, “but we all call her White Lily.”

She was radiant in every single way – with her long, dark hair cascading down her shoulders and her pale skin trying to imitate the impeccable snow. She didn’t look in his direction, not even once, and the heir looked down, ashamed, thinking about the girl waiting for him back home.

He was promised to somebody else, that’s how life was supposed to continue.

As Sojiro and his son Hanzo left the chateau, Maurice patted the young heir on the shoulder and congratulated the kumicho: life had given the man many things, but it had never graced him with a son. That lonely girl, dancing away her childhood in the corner, was the closest approximation to an heir the Guillards had in their possession.

It was hard not to hear the subtle notes of disappointment in Maurice’s voice, not to notice the disheartened implications hitting close to home: the heir had one of those back in Shimada Castle, an innocent brother perceived by the clan as a potential liability. Yet the girl still danced, her eyes too far gone to care for the strangers in expensive-looking suits – and the conflicted young heir stared at her and her lovely white dress once more; one last time before departing her house, as if trying to commit her paradigm to memory. Now, etched inside his mind, that part of her childhood would remain forever intact.

The second time he saw her, she finally looked at him. He was twenty-two now, and Amélie had just turned seventeen years old – but the void inside those eyes of hers seemed too familiar to be ignored: that life was dragging her down paths of brimstone and despair. She didn’t dance this time, yet the ballerina in her was still in charge of all her moves. Time had graced her with sophistication, beauty, and mystery, the same elements he longed to find in that other girl, the one waiting for him back in Japan; the same elements he could never see in the shape of the woman the clan had chosen for him.

Walking alone in the imperturbable night of Chateau Guillard, the heir found her with her white dress pooling around her ankles and her eyes lost beyond the confines of the window.

“Have you noticed?” she said, “it’s never sunny here,”

If he had to be completely honest, he hadn’t paid that much attention: his first visit had been protocollary brief and she had quickly become an unwanted distraction back then. But this second visit had been stained with loneliness right from the start: his father had stayed home, he was on his own for the first time, far away from the comfort of his castle, far away from the place he loved the most.

He didn’t say anything. With timid steps the heir walked around the woman and let his eyes wander the cloudy night outside that room – she didn’t seem to mind his company, if anything, she didn’t seem intimidated by him.

It was such a refreshing feeling.

The day before leaving the chateau, he finally asked Maurice why they called her White Lily. The man said that the name evocated the pureness of her daughter; a symbol of beauty that can become dangerously vacant at any given time. The heir wondered if, perhaps, her father failed to see that flowers only exist to look pretty in the company of others, that they struggle in their loneliness, trying to find a reason to stay alive.

When the news about Maurice’s tragic passing interrupted the peaceful evening in Hanamura, Sojiro stood up and lost himself behind his office door – the death of an ally was a long process that never ended at the funeral, and the Scion knew it. When he saw her again, he saw the corruption spreading inside her eyes, blocking all possible sadness, detaching her from the little girl in her immaculate white dress, dancing away her childhood.

She was twenty-one and beautiful; cold and distant like the virgin snow that dresses the mountain during the winter. Inaccessible. Inhospitable.

Inhabited.

He realized, then, that the woman had become an extension of the cage keeping her a hostage of her own heritage. It was never sunny around her; her skin was frozen and the melody seemed to have forsaken her bones. A certain shade of blue had painted the white snow, making it colder. He wondered if her father would have been proud of the one that she was now, he wondered if his own father was proud of the Scion he had become.

When the funeral was over, and Chateau Guillard rested in the quiet, cloudy night, the Scion saw her again, dressed in black and still as a statue. He walked up to her and inspected the patterns on her dress – the fabric felt smooth against his skin, yet her eyes did not care for the artificial nature of such beauty.

The flower had struggled in her loneliness, trying to find a reason to stay alive.

Ultimately, she had failed - and had died her lonesome death.


End file.
